Preparing for State of the Union, Trump says he's learning to govern with 'heart'

When President Trump addresses a joint session of congress Tuesday night, he will undoubtedly say that the State of the Union is strong, and he's right. The economy is growing, the stock market is booming, and unemployment is low.
USA TODAY

President Trump poses for a portrait in the Oval Office on April 21, 2017.(Photo: Andrew Harnik, AP)

WASHINGTON — President Trump said he's learned that he can't always run the government like a business because millions of people are impacted by the decisions he makes as president.

"When you're a businessperson, you don't have to worry about your heart, the heart. You really do what's best for you — you know, for almost purely monetary reasons," Trump told a group of news anchors at the White House in advance of his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

Trump, a real estate mogul, campaigned in large part on his résumé as a businessman. Now that he's president, Trump said he has to put himself in the position of people who will be affected by his decisions on issues like immigration.

"I'm telling you, the immigration is so easy to solve if it was purely a business matter, but it's not. And I think that's something that I've learned maybe more than anything else. You have to govern with all of the instincts of a businessperson, but you have to add much more heart and soul into your decisions than you would ever have even thought of before," Trump said.

Trump's State of the Union address is expected to call for a bipartisan solution to immigration as Congress works toward a self-imposed Feb. 8 deadline to resolve the issue of so-called DREAMers. Last year, Trump revoked legal protections for those undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, asking Congress to decide their fate.

Trump's unusually introspective remarks came during an off-the-record interview with news anchors, part of a State of the Union tradition. The White House later released a transcript of excerpts of that interview, putting the president's remarks on the record.

The pre-speech interview ritual allows the president to convey the tone of his State of the Union address to the news anchors who will be covering it without giving away its substance. In one exchange, Trump says he wants to use the speech to unite the country.

"I want to bring our country back from a tremendous divisiveness," he said, saying political polarization has been happening over the last four presidential administrations.

"You take a look at that impeachment of Bill Clinton," he said. "During the impeachment of Bill Clinton was much worse than this. So many of you are too young to remember that. I feel too young to remember it, but I guess I'm not."